A select UK committee said any human-animal chimera embryo should not be allowed to develop past 14 days and there will be safeguards to ensure that none of these hybrid embryos are implanted in women -- that would be wrong.

Committee member Evan Harris said: "Ministers have never provided a rational basis for their ban and their only supporters are pro-life groups and anti-science campaigners who oppose all embryo research."

How about the rational idea that a human embryo has intrinsic value and the implicit right to be born and not used to serve someone else's self-serving agenda?

In a letter to Tony Blair, the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) said there had been growing disquiet about an outright ban. Spokeswoman Dr Sophie Petit-Zeman said the AMRC respected the sensitivity of the issue but that it was important to balance concerns against the medical benefits that might be lost if it were outlawed.

"This is a test of the government's commitment to science," Mr Willis said.

So, the term science is now being equated with a hard-core atheistic view in which a human embryo has purely functional value and no intrinsic value as a fledgling human being created in the image of God. How monstrous can we be? How long can this go on before God pulls the plug and says, "enough!"?